My last school recruited almost entirely through an agent and then moved to direct.
I've opted for the 'occasional' response but the point I want to make is that the recruiter had no quality control. For every good teacher taken on there were two marginal to bad ones.
You know the type. Does no prep but fronts the teacher office at 7.45am prints off a class set of something in a newspaper and he uses that stuff for the day.
Other teachers come in on the morning break and find no paper or ink (often), place in a mess ie windows open and blowing a gale.
So who a recruiter locates to be your colleagues, can have a bad effect on your experience.

Yes, that's the other side of the coin. What value would my school get from using a recruiter.

If we didn't speak English.
If we had lots of branches and wanted to recruit a large number of staff
If we didn't want to have to deal with all the stuff like flights, visas and general handholding. (Probably our FAO doesn't want to hve to deal with all this stuff, but its her job. In some ways a recruiter could be like an external FAO)]

But that's sort of the point. At best, by using a recruiter, we would be outsourcing a job that can nearly always be done better in-house.

So that leaves the possibility that a recruiter could find better candidates. after all, the majority of FOPs (fresh off the plane teachers) are going to be not great compared to the level of ability you'd get in other countries.

It's not easy, but i would hope that I can get good teachers myself, and like non sequitor, I think we're doing a reasonable job.

Anyway; that's not the question. I'm prepared to conceed that there may in theory be times when a school could benefit from using a recruiter. I'm not prepared to conceed that a potential teacher needs to use a recruiter, (unless they are already in China, have associates they trust who have used the recruiter, and are after a high level managerial position like a DOS. In these cases, I'd refer to them as headhunters, not recruiters).

I would have chosen the option for 'never used a recruiter, never saw the point' had it been there.

Not sure why anyone, teacher of school, would want to give money to a recruiter. Finding a job or an employee is not rocket science, especially in the Internet age. My last school has been going for 20 years, employs 30 to 40 full and part time foreign teachers and has never used an agent.

Would a recruiter be able to do the Z visa and work permit stuff? I thought it had to be the school, using the schools licence and stamp etc.

As to recruiters being able to source better, more experienced teachers, I would have thought those would be exactly the kind of teachers who would avoid recruiters like the plague. If you already know your way around and have a CV that puts you in demand, why on earth would you use a recruiter to find you a job?

Also, from what I've read on boards such as this about recruiters, you would be safer swimming with sharks. There may be one or two out there who are good and trustworthy, but is it a risk worth taking?

Joined: 11 Apr 2012Posts: 441Location: South of Heaven and East of Nowhere

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:40 am Post subject:

I chose option "C" ... here's why:

Not all recruiters in China are crooks. I have used recruiters for job connections on two separate occasions because I needed to find a new job quickly (due to visa expiration and "timing" issues) and because I knew that they could put me in contact with schools quickly and get the ball rolling. I knew I could get a variety of different offers in a variety of different places, and that's exactly what I was looking for at the time.

I was offered two jobs. I didn't end up accepting either one because in the first case, I didn't want to move up North so close to winter, and in the second case because after contacting the school, interviewing, and being offered the job, the school wanted to hire me at the low end of their advertised salary scale and that was not acceptable to me.

Employers are free to cast an 8,500 to 12,000 RMB "salary net" to try and catch their fish if they like, but they shouldn't be surprised when some of those teachers refuse the low number and attempt to hold them to the higher one. In my case, the second job salary negotiations fell through and we agreed to disagree. And THAT'S FAIR!

One recruiter is Canadian and is a respectable member of these forums. He is also an ESL teacher. One recruiter is Chinese and I would contact her again (they both worked for the same agency) if I needed or wanted to find a new job.

Networking and Trust are wonderful things ... but you need to work hard at both of them and neither one comes without risk.

All the adds Ive seen posted on the recommended job search sites seem to be posted by recruiters. Where does one find jobs posted directly by the school? Ive heard Chinatefl.com, but you have to pay them apparently.

All the adds Ive seen posted on the recommended job search sites seem to be posted by recruiters. Where does one find jobs posted directly by the school? Ive heard Chinatefl.com, but you have to pay them apparently.

You DO NOT have to pay anyone to contact the schools listed on China TEFL. The schools that advertise on there pay a fee to China TEFL to place their ad, and with that ad they list their own contact info on the left hand side. If you look you'll see this. China TEFL does offer other services you have to pay for but if you're seeing those then you're looking at the wrong part of their site.

RE recruiters, some people need them. Not every teacher is net savvy. I've met a few, usually older, ESL teachers over the years whose internet capabilities were limited to sending email. Not everyone knows where to find good jobs, and many people don't know about forums like this one let alone join them and take part in discussions. I'd also say that there are many potential ESL teachers who've never left their own country and feel reassured by having someone else handle the job search and other details for them. And since the school usually pays for the recruiter there's less risk to the teacher, so I don't see a problem with it. Whether or not the job pans out as expected is a different story. Sometimes it does and other times it doesn't.

Why would a school pay a recruiter? First they have the money. Second, just like there are teachers who don't know where to find jobs there are schools that have no idea where to look for foreign teachers. Most recruiters here seem to be local people so the schools probably feel more comfortable dealing with them in Chinese rather than dealing with a foreigner in English.

Recruiting or headhunting firms are hardly something that's unique to China, and they fill a niche in the market wherever they're needed.

I've been in contact with a few recruiters in the past, but I've never accepted a job offered to me by one of them as I've always found what I wanted on my own. For this poll I chose C, for some people and schools recruiters are a good idea, for others they're not necessary.

I chose C as well. Not all recruiters charge for their services as someone above accused, in fact, I would say most don't and only the actual scamming places do. But there's enough info out there that anyone with a brain should be smart enough to search more in-depth about said recruiters and realize that they're a scam.

I first came to China through a recruiter which has a good reputation in China and I had nothing but positive experiences. They supported me 100% whenever I had problems, gave me a week long crash course on China and schools in China, paid on time, and sent me to a location that I knew nothing about, but fell in love with.

My year and a half with that recruiter was exactly what I wanted. However, AFTER that, I realized that I might be in China longer than I initially planned (came expecting just to do a year) and that I would have much more opportunities for challenges and growth if I went out on my own to do universities.

I don't really consider middlemen to be recruiters. They are, but all they do is connect A to B and take a fee that I don't pay so I don't care about it.

There are good recruiters out there for sure, I just think that China vets don't need them so much, they're more for newbies, which is fine. I take comfort in knowing that at any time if I had a huge problem getting fired or doing a runner from a horrible school ASAP I could contact my old recruiter and they would get me a job starting immediately.

There are some good scammers out there, but I just feel that a HUGE percent of the people that get scammed, are people who didn't do their research or didn't research enough. And if you go to a crazy country like China or Thailand completely unaware and unprepared well, you deserve to get scammed.

.....all they do is connect A to B and take a fee that I don't pay so I don't care about it....

the fee is coming from somewhere, and that somewhere is you. there's a
bucket o'cash in the director's office marked "foreign teacher" with limited
funds. the more the recruiter gets, the less you receive.

saying the recruiters fee doesn't lower your salary is like saying income tax
deductions have no affect on your take-home pay, or that socialized
medicine provides free health care.

it's not wrong.....the 'cruiter is providing a service for which he should be
paid. what is wrong in my opinion is the idea that you don't pay it.

.....all they do is connect A to B and take a fee that I don't pay so I don't care about it....

the fee is coming from somewhere, and that somewhere is you. there's a
bucket o'cash in the director's office marked "foreign teacher" with limited
funds. the more the recruiter gets, the less you receive.

While that MAY be true, schools that don't deal with recruiters don't always magically supply higher salaries. so it's irrelevant since school A uses a recruiter and has the exact same salary as School B that doesn't use a recruiter. That "Money" marked for foreign teachers is disappearing regardless.

When did you talk to a school directly and they said "Oh, ya know, since you contacted us personally and didn't go through the recruiter, we'll slap on an extra 1,000 to your monthly salary?" The "recruiter fee" you're talking about is getting paid with by the same money that pays for our visas, and our apartments, and all the other BS that we don't really have to deal with because the school does it for us. Almost every job ad for schools here you see on the internet is from recruiters. I wouldn't get that money anyway, so I don't worry about it. But I feel a lot better knowing that money is going to a recruiter than into the Directors BMW.

You DO NOT have to pay anyone to contact the schools listed on China TEFL. The schools that advertise on there pay a fee to China TEFL to place their ad, and with that ad they list their own contact info on the left hand side. If you look you'll see this. China TEFL does offer other services you have to pay for but if you're seeing those then you're looking at the wrong part of their site.

I've been enjoying looking at Chinatefl. One thing Ive noticed though is that the university jobs listed there seem to be lower paying then the ones Ive heard about from recruiters. Most uni jobs I hear about through recruiters pay 5500 rmb, and the ones on Chintefl seem to pay 5000 or lower. Does anyone know why there's a discrepancy?